


I feel the ending

by The_Otter_Association



Series: You're Not Alone [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Colourblind Soulmates, Gen, I will rewrite this someday, Illusion of Choice, Memory Related, Only lightly beta'ed, Power Imbalance, Zen Garden (Detroit: Become Human), all thoughts can be read in the zen garden, honestly this is probably a hot mess that doesn't make sense, machine connor - Freeform, note: they are NOT the soulmates, only sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24532129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Otter_Association/pseuds/The_Otter_Association
Summary: Connor is advised against keeping the memories of his soulmate.
Relationships: Amanda & Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Past Connor (Detroit: Become Human) & Reader
Series: You're Not Alone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772971
Kudos: 9





	I feel the ending

**Author's Note:**

> This is a divergence from my other fic, [I Fell in Deep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15557706). While it's better to have read that fic first (at least until Connor finds reader, where this fic then takes place) it is not necessary.
> 
> While an official divergence, my Connor was more accurately dropped into the universe of For You I Was Strong (by SecretlyADog) and adapted to fit. Thus only part of IFID holds true.
> 
> The general rules of that universe is: everyone has (a) soulmate(s). You are colourblind until you touch them. Even androids can be bonded together.
> 
> This was written back in December 2018/January 2019 and thus does not accurately represent my current writing style. This is ..... also a hot mess. More than a year later I'm looking at this and wondering what the hell I meant. Still, someone might enjoy this.  
> I'll be rewriting this when inspiration strikes.
> 
> Title was taken from SHY Martin's "Forget to Forget".

Amanda did not leave him waiting long. In truth, perhaps it might not have even been described as waiting at all. She had invited him in and down the rabbit hole he went. She watched him from where she stood, a bright and sharp gown accentuated her features, deepening the tone of her skin. The cherry blossoms twirled in paler tones, something light and gentle, a colour he couldn’t describe. The sky was a deep and rich colour, of royalty and mystery, gradient towards a soothing colour. Red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, indigo - he could name all the colours of the rainbow, knew that the sky was blue most often than not but at the forefront of his mind all he could do was admire it all.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it, Connor?” and her voice was sharp, biting, despite the low weight of it. The way she looked at him, dark eyes lidded by even darker lashes, didn’t give him enough to go off of. Even her micro-expressions were neutral, void of any hidden constructed meaning.

She expected the truth from him. “Yes.”

She shifted her head, chin tilted in such a way that almost made him believe that she was displeased. There was no foreboding disgrace in her eyes though. Just the heavy feeling of  _ waiting.  _ Amanda’s eyes shifted from him. She gripped the creased expanse of her dress in her spare hand, turned to go. Connor stepped up behind her, a few footfalls back, just enough distance to be polite and companionable at the same time.

“It will leave you,” Amanda said, breaking the pseudo-silence of the Garden. Connor stopped just as she did, saw the curve of her cheek as she turned her head slightly to address him. “In time all these colours that you see will be gone.” Even without her eyes on him, he could feel her watchful gaze upon him. She saw him through the trees and the river, everything he did was far from hidden from her. “It is the way of things.”

Connor couldn’t say he understood, knew that perhaps his lack of knowledge wasn’t important in the scheme of things in the end. His thoughts were not hidden from her here either, he has known this from experience.

Connor watched the rise and fall of her shoulders with each breath she took. “Is it being taken from me?”  _ Have I done something wrong? _

“Not by us,” and it was the shift in the wind, the rustle of the leaves overhead that spoke of her honesty more than the tone of voice that she used, the rumble of her throat as she exhaled. “By death alone. We had no hand in this.” She looked at him then, face overcast by the shadow of her parasol, “Fate has not been kind to you, Connor. Tell me, what do you know of soulmates?”

It was not immediately familiar to him, though he had heard the term before in passing, when he had crossed the street or in the bustle of a coffee shop. He tilted his head, furrowed his brow and mimicked the confused expression as best he could, the closest thing that he felt matched what beat inside his chest. “Not enough. Will you tell me?”

“..Yes. Only because of what has come to pass. All AIs in their hardware can view colour from the moment they are crafted, as can every human child at birth. Humans lose that colour as they age, Androids do not.

“The reason for this is unclear, heavy speculation. Impracticalities, it is a foolish notion to figure out the hows and whys. The soul reaches out at puberty, harmonizes in a way we cannot understand - and they see colour again. They call this other person, this other being, a soulmate.

“Androids do not have soulmates, Connor, this you must understand. We do not have souls, not in the way humans do. Sometimes, there are mistakes: errors in our coding, improper connection issues in eyes and with the brain, a corrupted colour program. … Sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is something beyond CyberLife’s control, situations like yours.”

“I had a soulmate?” Connor asked and in her eyes he could see the truth. He dropped his gaze to the pale marble tiles beneath their feet, at the reflective surface and how brilliantly their distorted figures shone back. The colour itself was brilliant. He closed his eyes, lost and -- confused. He didn’t understand, not yet, not completely, perhaps not ever. Somewhere inside of his head his programming hurt. “I had a soulmate and it had been them.” There had been a peculiar weight to Amanda’s words, a distinct feeling of information withheld or speculative thoughts. Would it have hurt him to know what that was?

If only humans had souls and consequently the soulmates addition, what did that make him? Was he a human soul entrapped in an Android body? Was there a guideline for how he should have felt in his own skin, a sense of belonging or rightness? Just what did it mean for an Android and a human to be paired up as they had been? Was he the only one to function this way? “Why would I lose the colours, Amanda?”

“Because their soul will move on,” she extended her hand, fingers splayed and without a thought he folded his arm. She tucked her hand there, curled securely in his warmth and she led him down the pathways he knew well.

It had been where he had been initialized, where he had learned to move and function before he had done it physically. He … hadn’t even been appointed to the DPD publicly yet, not as the previous RK800 had been. His partner had been lined up, someone notorious for his Android hate and yet his detective abilities was practically second to one.   
  
He had looked forward to working in the DPD in a way, had already gone on a couple coffee runs to acquaint himself with them. If this information of him having a soulmate leaked, would his position be revoked?

“We do not want you going back, Connor,” Amanda spoke and the thought dissipated like smoke through his fingertips. There wasn’t even a falter in his footfalls, just a small blip in his processors. Her eyes were not on him but instead the cherry blossom trees overhead, then the climbing rose bushes as they strode through the gazebo. “Not right now, not as you are.” The air was thick with a questioning hum, heavy in his gut and in his mind. “Androids do not usually have soulmates,” she amended her earlier statement, “and certainly not machines. There is only one other thing for you to be, Connor.”

The realization came too quick, too violently and he closed his eyes, let the idea settle thickly between his ribs. “A deviant.” This conversation was not as enlightening as either of them might have thought it would have been. It all led to shrouded dead ends inside his mind, infinite possibilities and endless chances. The more he knew the more was he aware that he knew next to nothing at all. “Am I to be deactivated?” It was not a frightful thought but it left a funny taste inside his mouth. He blinked open his eyes at her, apprehensive. They would have told him if they were shutting him down, wouldn’t they have?

“No. Never you, Connor, not now.” Her hand reached out to stroke his face, fingers cold against the flat of his cheek, a promise and comfort, the only he has ever known. Connor has always known that he was programmed to be dedicated to her, to worship the ground she walked, to admire the very air she breathed. The symbol of CyberLife itself, she was to represent his dedication to the company. “And certainly not because of this; this... was not your fault.” Her fingernails scraped across his false skin, never painful but still present. He wasn’t certain if she believed what she spoke of. “You could not control it.”

She stepped back, away from him and he felt the chill between them. Never before had she felt so distant from him, a slow disconnect present as a fizzle in the air. It was not as if she shut him out, not completely, but he could see the blinds go up between them. A stone dropped inside his chest. He has disappointed her. “But I have done something wrong, haven’t I?”

“In a way. We did not want you to accept information from that deviant - I had called you here to interfere, to intercept that thought. You are not allowed to look at them. It is confidential information of their lives, secrets that are protected by law. It will not help you to know them, Connor.” Her head tipped back and she carefully extended the parasol in front of her, recast the shadows onto the ground instead as she folded it up. Her eyes never strayed from him. “Humans are different from us, they are mortal. They die and we cannot follow them after. It will hurt you to know them as they were in life, to see them as they were. Time cannot go backwards and you will regret it.”

Connor has known CyberLife the entirety of his constructed life, has known the intricacies and tendencies that Amanda has, would like to assume that he knew enough of her and the Garden to assume correctly on her mood and intention. He knew how the company thought, knew that they would blame themselves for what he was, what he had become - what he had always been- and that perhaps they might try to fix him.

Even though her words had every proper bit of emotion in the grooves of her voice, he knew enough about CyberLife. They were one of the few things he was certain of. There was an ulterior motive to her phrasing, to her faux frigid comfort. It was the way that she stood in front of him that had him certain that she knew that he knew too.   
  
There was no falsehood in her words though.   
  
It was harder to let someone go once you were told you couldn’t have them, when it wasn’t of your own choice. The pain would fester like a bad ache, could very well devour him whole.

Connor closed his eyes. The memories were not his to keep or to take. The other deviant had assumed he would want them and he does, in a weird distorted way, but not if it would hurt, not if it might kill him, not if he would regret it. He does not want his memory of them to be tainted by how someone else perceived them.

“I do not want to be deviant,” he whispered and the words sound broken to his own ears. Connor felt like a small and vulnerable child, frail to the barren winds there, sheltered by nothing but her alone. She could let him fall if she wanted to - and he knew, innately, that he could catch himself. It would be the impact on the ground that would hurt worse than the weightlessness before. He could be destroyed if he let himself, if he chose wrong in this moment. She watched him, gave him a chance to steel his resolve, to reaffirm his words - or to let it break, lost to the notion of his innate deviancy. CyberLife would not keep a deviant they could not control. “I do not want to hurt anyone.” He made his choice.

“You do not have to,” she told him and she turned towards her roses, a bright passionate colour. The one of lips and of fire, the heat of summer and the warm glow of sunlight. Red, he would have guessed, a little wary but her subtle nod was enough to ease the tension in his chest. “You can stay here with us. We can protect you; the humans who do not understand cannot hurt you here.” It was an offering, a promise and such a deep-rooted oath that he could feel it in the shadow of his metallic bones. He watched her pull a pair of trimmers out of nothing, settled her fingers along the stems of a couple roses, propped its head upwards as she inspected it. Her thumb ran along the edges.

Connor did not immediately say anything, swallowed the small bundle in his throat as he watched her move. Her gestures and motions had been soothing. A distinct program inside of him recognized her as a beacon of warmth and sanctuary. She was always meant to be like this.   
  
He … liked this feeling, this friendly intimacy between the both of them regardless of how constructed it was on his side. AIs like her could never completely reciprocate, always as one-sided as it was. It was enough. He didn’t want to give it up. Selfishness, he believed it was called. Amanda could become nothing more than a dictator if he chose to see her like that.

The colour matched the tone of her dress, the embroidery the colour of the sun but a off-tone, something similar to the familiar silver that he knew. Gold, he believed it was called. Soon, he would not see it again and it would become nothing but a memory.   
  
Connor knew that he would like to see it again, to see the sky and the ocean, to not have the colours fade from his vision. He didn’t completely understand the notion of being colourblind and yet … if he had seen colour once and lost it, might he be able to see colour again? Might he meet them again, or someone else that his soul harmonized with?

“This is a choice you can make,” Amanda told him and his thoughts interrupted harshly, a skip in a record. As a computer it would be easy to pick up again. She had settled on a rose, the hue rich and vibrant, drew out the earthy tones of her skin, threw everything into perspective. It looked nice against her and she genuinely looked as if she belonged among them. Her meticulousness about her rose bushes did not go amiss. He has always noticed it, wondered about it. If complete machines like her could have been happy, Connor would have liked to believe it had been with those plants.

“And everything after will be your choice as well. They will be your own.” Her meaning was not hidden well enough and he saw it plainly. Everything before then had been his choice as well, back before he knew that he had them, that he could make them. It was something only deviants and humans had been entitled to, something he could only begin to fathom.

Was it truly a choice if he hadn’t known he had been making one, if he hadn’t known there  _ were  _ choices? Amanda did not hold him accountable for his past actions at least.

“We will not keep you here if you don’t want to. You can leave or you can stay; we will let you go.” Connor knew the results of both pathways. There was no telling how the humans would react to finding out an android and human could have a soulbond. They had always been violent towards his kind, all but slaves to them. Connor has seen no other future for them as it stood in that moment. The United States has historically not treated its oppressed residents kindly.   
  
He could pass off as a human, live on the streets or in dumpsters. He could travel to any of the countries that accept his kind, that recognize the marking of a soulmate as proof of individuality, of consciousness.

Amanda’s words were a promise to give him a head start, an implication that they would not send someone after him. But the probability of that shifted constantly, impractical to base his choice solely on that. Not that he was going to. He knew the power of CyberLife, that just because they promised not to harm him that they would not slap a photo of his face around and warn of his existence at the borders.

He was a lone android though, they would not trouble him. If it was money they were worried about, he could surely pay off the cost it took to make him. Certainly not now but later. CyberLife did not draw attention to their own deviants though, never would and never have. They claimed deviancy was a result of humans breaking their respective Androids. They can blame themselves for his errors, his ability to hold a soul, but they will not blame themselves for the deviancy of others so readily.

CyberLife could not change the laws of the land. The people did. As it happened the people as a majority hated the Androids as a whole.

Connor knew he could make it on his own, that the probability of a successful escape not just out of the headquarters but out of the country was a solid 78%. It was enough to risk it. He could even barter his own memories, slap a price on them and threaten them to give him money to make it easier - but it was a disgusting thought and it was only through his ability to comprehend and think of future possibilities that he considered it in the first place.

He could escape, he could be free - be  _ alive. _

“I’m going to stay,” Connor told her instead. “What will you have me do?”

There had been no reason for him to stay, not truly. The other options was seductive, a sinful whisper at the back of his mind but he has always known the choice he would make. Even as he stood there, reluctant to admit to himself about his deviancy, he knew it was not because of his hesitancy about no longer being a machine.

It was the exact opposite: the very sentiments so firmly coined with deviancy was what rooted him here. CyberLife would have their own reasons for keeping him here, would give him a purpose here just as he had one in the DPD temporarily - if that could even be counted. He was more a detective for hire as it were.

His soulmate lived here until they died, it was the only city he has ever known. All the people he has ever encountered lived or visited Detroit often enough. He would likely never see them again if he was kept confined to the tower but they also knew him, knew what he was capable of and his inherent preferences during missions.   
  
They had remarked a couple times that Connor behaved differently than the two previous incarnations and perhaps now he understood why. CyberLife would know what he would be good at, what he would be willing to do. They knew him best, had built him from the ground up even with the aid of blueprints.

CyberLife had no say in how androids were treated, not directly or indirectly, but perhaps if something were to change - if something were to alter the course of history … it might happen here, at the very heart and home of Androids in the USA. Connor did not believe he would live long enough to see it but perhaps one day. It has happened before. He would like to see it all the same, even if he were on the other side.

On another hand, Connor could be given a purpose, have a concrete plan of how to do things, to be told what to do and know how it needed to be done. Perhaps he could still help in his own way, has always wanted to do right - CyberLife, in its own way, has always wanted to do the same.

Perhaps he could claim that CyberLife’s protection guaranteed that he would live a longer life, that if souls could move on perhaps it could be to another body. The idea that a reincarnated soulmate could meet him again was a little heartwarming and satisfied the aching in his chest.

In truth Connor did not figure that if his soulmate lived again that they would live in Detroit, figured the thought too fantastical and out of reach. He knew nothing of how often soulmates came into someone’s life, if he would meet someone else - and it was a hopeful thought that he wanted to grasp at, at the timid sense of  _ right  _ that he had felt when he had made contact with his soulmate. As if he had finally found a place to belong.

If not that, mayhaps he could learn of his soulmate in  _ healthier  _ ways than through another’s biased eyes. If that was something that he decided that someday he was ready for.

Amanda said nothing to his response. The silence was stifled by a sharp snip and it sealed his fate. It felt like impressions of leaves inside his skin, to branches twining along his ribs and other bones, roots taken hold inside his blood. It did not hurt, was barely more than a boil beneath his skin and once it had passed it had barely left an impression.   
  
Whatever his choice would have been, Amanda would have taken the memories that he elected not to see. They were not his to keep, he assured himself. He did not miss them when they left but it left a strange hollow feeling all the same - like a missed chance.

The silence blossomed again, interrupted only by the slow sound of petals hitting the grass and stone. Finally, she retracted her hand from the bush and took his palm, pressed it there and let him have it. In her own way she had loved those flowers in the only way that she could, cherished them in a way that he knew that she logically was incapable of. For her to give it to him … it was CyberLife’s complete acknowledgement of his choice and agreement.

In the end it was the way that Amanda looked at him that said enough. Connor’s presence could not hide from her omnipotent sight, from the gentle tendrils of light touches and slippery code that settled between his own projected coding. The truth was very much apparent to the both of them.

Connor had chosen to stay because something in his heart, his  _ soul,  _ told him to.


End file.
